General
Population: 1.24 Billion*
- Education: Mary Carpenter creates reformatory schools for juvenile offenders
- Entertainment: Writers include Hawthorne House of Seven Gables, Heinrich Heine, Gottfried Keller, Longfellow, Herman Melville Moby Dick,
Ruskin, Vincenzo Gioberti, Tennyson In Memoriam
Art includes Cornot "La Danse des Nymphes", Tenniel's cartoons appear in "Punch", Millet's "The Gleaners"
Music includes Gounod "Sappho", Verdi's "Rigoletto", Wagner, Schumann
- Medicine: Helmholtz opthalmoscope invented
- Science: Samual A Cartwright describes "drapetomania" in slaves
Franz Neumann creates law of electromagnetic induction
William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) begins papers on laws of conservation and dissipation of energy
- Sports: The schooner America wins race around Isle of Wight and brings America's Cup to the US
- Technology: Isaac Singer patents sewing machine
Cast-iron frame building constructed by J. Bogardus
Bessemer steelmaking process founded
HD Ruhmkorff invents high tension induction coil
First underwater telegraph cable
- Transportation: First double-decker bus
- Deaths: French Duke of Dalmatia Nicholas Soult, Artist JMW Turner, Diplomat Poinsett (poinsettias named after him), Photographer Louis Daguerre,
Author James Feinmore Cooper, Statesman Levi Woodbury, Composer Albert Lortzing, Painter FA Tichbein, Peter II (Vladikas) of Montenegro,
Writer Mary W Shelly (Frankenstein),
Africa
- General: Beginning of Basuto War
- Nigeria: British occupy Lagos ending slave trade
Americas
- Brazil: Slave trade outlawed
- Cuba: Declares independence
Asia
- China: 15 year flood in Shanghai - Millions die in flooding in the Peking-Shanghai-Hankow area during 15 year period
- Thailand: King Rama IV begins to rule
Europe
- France: Coup d'etat of Louis Napoleon - declares self emperor – plebiscite in France favors new constitution
- German States: Prussia recognizes German Confederation - treaty with Hanover
- Great Britain: Great Exhibition in Hyde Park - crystal palace created - precursor of World Fair
Tuberculosis for 5 years in England kills 250,000
William Cubitt builds King's Cross Station in London
- Italian States: Sicily tornado kills 500
- Montenegro: Danilo II converts Montenegro into secular principality
Middle East
Pacific
- Australia: Gold found in SE Australia at Bathurst
Victoria declared a separate colony